Lending Club Says It Overstated Loan Sales Figures

Lending Club has revised its loan sales data for the last week of May after discovering that the numbers included loans that it actually bought itself.

After initially reporting that it sold $65 million of loans for the week ending May 31, Lending Club said in a regulatory filing late Wednesday that the total was actually $21 million, in line with prior weeks' sales figures. The Wall Street Journal, which reported on the revision Friday, said that the error was the result of a new process for tagging loans that Lending Club buys itself.

The company also revised downward the amount of loans offered for sale, from $66.6 million to $30.3 million.

The revision was the latest in a series of setbacks for country's largest and best-known online lender.

In early May, its founder Renaud Laplanche resigned amid allegations that certain loan data had been falsified. Since then, the company has reported that some of its key investors had stopped buying its loans, forcing Lending Club, which relies on loan sales to fund future loans, to keep more loans on its balance sheet.

The Journal has also reported that Lending Club is in talks with several major hedge funds about providing funding for its loans. They include Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC, Soros Fund Management LLC and Third Point LLC.

Lending Club's shares were trading at $4.24 late Friday, down 5.2% from Thursday's close. Its shares have declined by more than 40% since Laplanche stepped down on May 9.

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